Mathematical Model of the NFL (21 October 2007):

Last week, my NFL picks versus the spread earned a return on invested capital of +60.6%, and, believe it or not, my compounded rate of return (when all picks are included, with all profits and losses fully invested (equally across all picks) in each new set of picks) is now at an absolutely staggering +133.9% -- that is my ACTUAL (!) compounded Return on Invested Capital since I've started to post the picks of my mathematical model of football.

For those of you who are interested, my new numbers, picks, and predictions for the week's upcoming NFL games are now up... I'm posting them at:

My posts on the numbers underlying the NFL are getting to be longer and longer, and since I didn't think THIS FORUM would feel cool about such long posts being put-up here, I went-off and started my own blog, where I can talk about value investing -- as it applies to sports.

For those of you who haven't yet seen what I'm doing, I'm attemting to prove that wagering on sports IS a form of value investing, if it is actually approached AS investing. Wagering on sports is really about "finding value" in the offered wagers. Efficiency mis-matches on the field need to be discovered, first, and these, then, in turn, need to be matched-up with inefficiencies in the point spread(s) offered. Each week, there are only a small handful of wagers that are actually mis-priced (undervalued), and these few cases are what I search for. The math underlying this is my own, and I'm not yet fully ready to reveal the underlying concepts. I do believe that I'm the only one attempting this with football -- I've found 2 particularly valueable stats (of my own creation) which seem to have enormous predictive value in determining the outcome of football games, particularly when combined with the idea of adding points given by the spread.

So, if this is the sort of thing that interests you, have a look.

It is long conceptual stretch to consider this kind of thing to be "investing," but rest assured, I KNOW that it is investing, and this is essentially my attempt to prove it.

Interesting. I'll check your blog. I have seen a couple of sites that did statistical analyses of various situations, for example, should you go for it on 4th and goal?

What do you think about the Steelrs-Broncos this week? I initially didn;t like it, but the more I think about the way the Bolts ran roughshod over the Broncos, the more I am thinking this could be a decent play giving 3 1/2. I'm just not that impressed by Ben R or the new Steeler staff, at least yet. They thumped a decent Seattle squad, but they stubbed their toe against Arizona.

It's more of a way to measure performance in percentage terms over time.

Take a hypothetical $1000, divide it among the picked games, count your losses fully, and pay-off your winning wargers with a $110/$100 ratio of $wagered/$won, which is pretty standard for most sports books in Vegas; it's how they pay their bills.

In order to compute a compounded rate of Return on Invested Capital for this kind of activity, gains and losses need to be carried forward, through each set of picked games, divided across the picked games, and wagered evenly.

It's more of a mathematical formula that allows performance of a model to be measured across time, than a strategy. In real life, I don't conduct my financial life in this way -- it is, however, a simple way to measure the general performance of a model, without getting lost in the details of a complex betting structure.